london Johnson launched the Great Society programme in 1964. In the end, the ‘War on Poverty’ failed to live up to all of its promises. To explain these shortcomings this article will firstly analyse the choice of policy instruments; secondly, there will be some discussion of the political and intellectual context of the program; finally, it will look at who gained and who lost from the Great Society. The contention here will be that the Great Society arose out of a variety of factors. In part, it was the creation of experts in a decade when expertise in general was highly esteemed. The programme was also typical of Johnson’s political agenda of personal aggrandizement. But the War on Poverty can perhaps be best explained by focusing on the dynamics of various interest groups in society. For although the Great Society was nominally directed at the poor, it was not primarily the poor that benefited. The changing political coalitions and the battle for power between policy-makers at different levels had a great impact on the programme, and explains the limits of its effectiveness.

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Large bombings, only days apart, in Bogota and Derry/Londonderry have put paid to any notions of a simple peace process in either country. These events show that the two very different conflicts display many of the same dynamics. Both countries have seen increasingly fragmented peace processes, with multiple non-state actors and intransient splinter groups vying…

Since the Vietnam War, officials of the United States have increasingly abused the essential democratic safeguards of accountability and an informed citizenry in apparent attempts to protect themselves from being held accountable for their actions. They use secrecy and disinformation to prevent the American people from obtaining the information they need to evaluate their government’s…

CESRAN International is pleased to announce that it has been named again amongst the world’s best think tanks. The 2018 Global Go To Think Tank Index ranked CESRAN International 141st among the World’s “Top Think Tanks in Western Europe” 76th among the World’s “Top Environment Policy Think Tanks” 152nd among the World’s “Top Foreign Policy…